Google TAG Alerts on Rising Heliconia Exploit Framework for RCE

 

The Threat Analysis Group (TAG) at Google has discovered Heliconia, a cyberattack framework designed to exploit zero-day and n-day security flaws in Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Defender. It is likely linked to Variston IT, a gray-market spyware broker, demonstrating how this shadowy sector is thriving. The Heliconia threat is made up of three modules:

• Heliconia Noise for compromising the Chrome browser, escaping the sandbox, and installing malware;
• Heliconia Soft, a Web framework that deploys a PDF containing a Windows Defender exploit for CVE-2021-42298 that allows privilege escalation to SYSTEM and remote code execution (RCE);
• And the Heliconia Files package which contains a fully documented Firefox exploit chain for Windows and Linux, including CVE-2022-26485 for RCE.

The threat was discovered after TAG received an anonymous submission to the Chrome bug reporting program. Further investigation revealed that the Heliconia framework's source code includes a script that refers to Variston IT, a Barcelona-based company that claims to provide "custom security solutions."

Commercial spyware is frequently sold by organizations claiming to be legitimate businesses for "law enforcement use." According to a TAG posting on Wednesday, mounting evidence shows that too often, these brokers don't vet their clients, "putting advanced surveillance capabilities in the hands of governments who use them to spy on journalists, human rights activists, political opposition, and dissidents.

Researchers noted that Variston IT is firmly in the middle of this rapidly expanding market, which has seen sanctioning by the US and others against organizations such as the infamous NSO Group, creators of the Pegasus spyware.